Adjective
- 1. baffling, elusive, knotty, problematic, problematical, tough, difficult (vs. easy), hard
- usage: making great mental demands; hard to comprehend or solve or believe; "a baffling problem"; "I faced the knotty problem of what to have for breakfast"; "a problematic situation at home"
- 2. gnarled, gnarly, knotted, knotty, knobbed, crooked (vs. straight)
- usage: used of old persons or old trees; covered with knobs or knots; "gnarled and knotted hands"; "a knobbed stick"
- 3. Byzantine, convoluted, involved, knotty, tangled, tortuous, complex (vs. simple)
- usage: highly complex or intricate and occasionally devious; "the Byzantine tax structure"; "Byzantine methods for holding on to his chairmanship"; "convoluted legal language"; "convoluted reasoning"; "the plot was too involved"; "a knotty problem"; "got his way by labyrinthine maneuvering"; "Oh, what a tangled web we weave"- Sir Walter Scott; "tortuous legal procedures"; "tortuous negotiations lasting for months"
- 4. knotty, snarled, snarly, tangled (vs. untangled)
- usage: tangled in knots or snarls; "a mass of knotted string"; "snarled thread"
WordNet 3.0 Copyright © 2006 by Princeton University.
All rights reserved.Definition and meaning of knotty (Dictionary)